Who cares about Arianna Adan?

Tomorrow, a federal judge in Newark is expected to set a date for the deportation to Argentina of a 6-year-old American child--born here.

Unless lawyers for her mother, Elena Mazza, can win a stay from an appeals court, Arianna Adan will--within days--be put on an airplane and sent to Buenos Aires to become a ward of the state until Argentinean courts decide which of her parents should have custody.

Family disputes are notoriously difficult and painful, and not easily subject to a clear picture of who is right and who is wrong. Here, however, it is obvious that one person involved in this case is wrong: District court Judge William H. Walls.

Walls is sending this child to an uncertain fate in Argentina, but he has never spoken to her, never seen her, never ordered one study to determine whether she had, in fact, been sexually abused by her father, Ariel Adan, convicted for abusing Arianna's mother and an admitted narcotics user. Although, in his decision, Walls praised himself for personally--on his own--investigating Argentinean family law, the judge never bothered to investigate whether Arianna had ever been molested by her father, as her mother charged--and as at least one health care professional suggested.

He did find that Arianna's mother, also an American, was subjected to force by the child's father, but not enough for Walls to care. Not beaten enough, apparently, to justify--in his eyes--her escape with her child from Argentina.

Walls found Adan credible, yet Adan, the owner of rental apartments in Buenos Aires, told a state court he had no money to defend himself--so we paid for that--and yet, in federal court, told of how he was wealthy enough to care for Arianna.

Compare Walls' attitude to that of another federal judge, Denny Chin, in a New York case. Judge Chin read evaluations of the children. He interviewed one of the children. Chin cared that the children, while French citizens, were "settled" here--in Woodbridge, in fact. Certainly, Arianna, a born American, who has spent most of her life here, is clearly settled in New Jersey. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=2nd&navby=case&no=006066

In that case, unlike here, the parents were married. In that case, unlike here, the children and mother were French, not American, citizens. In that case, unlike here, the father had not been convicted of domestic violence against the mother and was not a narcotics user.

In that case, unlike here, the judge cared about the children involved.

Walls was not alone in his indifference to Arianna. The state Division of Youth and Family Services declined her mother's request for an evaluation of the child's possible abuse, contending it had no jurisdiction. Ironically, it did investigate anonymous--want to guess who dropped a dime?--claims that her mother neglected Arianna. As a result, Elena Mazza was subjected to serial home visits and drug tests, all of which proved the child was well taken care of. Her father's actions were not investigated because he is from Argentina.

If Arianna is deported, as now appears likely, New Jersey will have witnessed an extraordinarily shameful chapter in American law and child welfare.